School, Priest Avoid Punitive Damages In Clergy Abuse Case

By Carla Baranauckas

The New Jersey state court jury that awarded $5 million in compensatory damages to a man who claimed he was sexually assaulted by a priest when he was a 15-year-old student at a prestigious Catholic prep school in Morristown declined on Thursday to impose punitive damages.

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NJ AG Sues Sig Sauer, Alleging Pistol Discharge Defect

By Emily Field

The New Jersey attorney general on Thursday launched a suit against Sig Sauer Inc. that seeks a mandatory recall of its P320 handgun on allegations it can fire unexpectedly — a defect that prosecutors said killed a police officer.

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Netflix Keeps Win In Documentary IP Suit From Atty's Film Co.

By Jake Maher

A New Jersey federal judge this week declined to reconsider his order throwing out an attorney's copyright infringement suit against Netflix Inc. over his documentary about sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America.

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Fla. Pension Fund Sues To Block Exxon Retail Voting Program

By Tom Lotshaw

A police pension fund in Florida hit Exxon Mobil Corp.'s directors with a proposed class action seeking to halt an allegedly unlawful, first-of-its-kind voting program that allows retail shareholders to opt to automatically support the board's recommendations.

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MTA Wants Truckers' Congestion Pricing Suit Tossed

By Linda Chiem

New York officials have told a Manhattan federal judge that an amended lawsuit alleging congestion pricing tolls wrongfully discriminate against commercial truckers still doesn't offer any new facts suggesting the tolls are unreasonable or violate federal law, so the lawsuit should be tossed for good.

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USDA Can't Curb SNAP Benefits As States Fight Data Demand

By Dorothy Atkins

A California federal judge on Wednesday preliminarily blocked the U.S. Department of Agriculture from withholding potentially billions of dollars in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit funds from states that refuse to turn over highly sensitive personal information on millions of SNAP food assistance benefit recipients.

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States Battle Trump Admin To Recover Solar Program Funds

By Juan-Carlos Rodriguez

Attorneys general from across the country are suing the Trump administration for allegedly violating the Constitution and federal law by canceling a $7 billion program providing solar equipment to low-income households.

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3rd Circ. Says FLSA Doesn't Limit Class Member Settlements

By Irene Spezzamonte

The Fair Labor Standards Act tackles only who can litigate claims and is silent on whether settlement class members who have not opted into a collective can release their claims under the federal law, the Third Circuit found Thursday.

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Brief

3rd Circ. Denies DOL's Bid For 2nd Look At H-2A Fine Powers

By Irene Spezzamonte

The full Third Circuit won't weigh whether the U.S. Department of Labor had the authority to use in-house administrative proceedings to impose more than $580,000 in fines on a New Jersey farm for what the department said were violations of the H-2A visa program.

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3rd Circ. Ruling Forces A Shift In Employer CFAA Probes

The Third Circuit's recent ruling in NRA Group v. Durenleau, finding that "unauthorized access" requires bypassing technical barriers rather than simply violating company policies, is forcing employers to recalibrate insider misconduct investigations and turn to contractual, trade secret and state-level claims, say attorneys at Sidley.

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Series

Traveling Solo Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Traveling by myself has taught me to assess risk, understand tone and stay calm in high-pressure situations, which are not only useful life skills, but the foundation of how I support my clients, says Lacey Gutierrez at Group Five Legal.

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Loan Forgiveness Overhaul May Chill Legal Aid Work

By Alison Knezevich

Civil legal services groups and public defenders say the Trump administration's proposed change to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program would politicize the initiative and make it harder to recruit attorneys to jobs that pay less than the private sector.

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Atty Quits Ga. Bar's 'Facade' Committee On Client Solicitation

By Chart Riggall

A Georgia attorney resigned Friday as head of the state bar's committee on attorney-client solicitation, accusing the bar of not even "reaching for a garden hose" while unlawful solicitation of accident victims has spread "like wildfire" across the Peach State.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Max Austin

This past week in London has seen Johnson & Johnson hit with a £1 billion ($1.34 billion) claim for allegedly selling contaminated baby powder, Carter-Ruck bring a claim against the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and Hewlett Packard file a probate claim against the estate of Mike Lynch.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

Exxon was hit with a proposed class action alleging its new program to enable automated proxy voting for retail investors is intended to stifle shareholder dissent. Meanwhile, a new survey found that nearly two-thirds of in-house legal departments think they will rely less on outside legal service providers because of generative artificial intelligence. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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NY Court Orders Hearing On Counsel Conflict In Drug Case

By Elizabeth Daley

A man who pled guilty to gun and drug charges and was sentenced to 12 years in prison can argue for a new trial due to ineffective counsel after a similarly culpable co-defendant got a light sentence allegedly due to cooperation between their attorneys, a New York state appeals court said in a reversal.

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Utah Fires Motley Rice From Opioid Case

By Jack Karp

The state of Utah has fired Motley Rice LLC from representing it in long-running litigation over the opioid crisis, a spokesperson for the Utah attorney general's office confirmed to Law360 Pulse on Friday.

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Ga. Judge Resigns After DUI Arrest Outside Fla. Strip Club

By Chart Riggall

A Georgia Superior Court jurist who led the state's Council of Superior Court Judges stepped down from the bench Thursday after his driving under the influence arrest last week outside a Jacksonville, Florida, strip club.

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UC Law School Can Drop Hastings Name, Appeals Court Says

By Andrea Keckley

California is allowed to drop Serranus Clinton Hastings' name from the University of California's San Francisco-based law school, a state appeals court has ruled, backing a trial judge's decision to toss a lawsuit filed by the former chief state Supreme Court justice's descendants and various school alumni.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Caldwell Cassady & Curry PC and Miller Fair Henry PLLC lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after a California federal jury found Samsung must pay nearly $445.5 million for infringing four wireless communication patents.

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Liberty Mutual Attys Face Sanctions Bid Over Citation Errors

By Emily Sawicki

A St. Louis federal court is weighing whether to sanction Liberty Mutual Personal Insurance Company's lawyers after they submitted a motion containing citation errors and then, after a warning, "somehow" submitted a second motion with the same types of mistakes.

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Federal Courts To Scale Back Operations Amid Shutdown

By Ryan Boysen

The federal court system has run out of money and will scale back operations beginning Monday as a result of the ongoing government shutdown, possibly leading to case delays.

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Robbins Geller To Steer REIT Investors' Suit Over $787M Deal

By Sydney Price

Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP will lead a proposed class of investors in real estate investment trust Broadmark Realty Capital Inc. who claim they were misled by executives from the REIT ahead of a $787 million merger with Ready Capital Corp. in 2023.

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